Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a steering device, a vehicle information presentation method, and a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a vehicle information presentation program.
Related Art
The occupant driving a vehicle steers the vehicle by operating the vehicle steering wheel. In order to transmit information from the vehicle side to the occupant driving the vehicle, a steering device capable of transmitting information to the occupant by imparting stimulus to the hands of the occupant gripping the steering wheel (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2009-001094), is known. This technology uses stimulus to transmit information to the hands of the occupant for indicating that steering is needed in order to avoid a collision with an obstacle, according to a detection result of detecting vehicle obstacles.
Moreover, in recent years, technology has been realized for assisting driving of a vehicle. As an example of technology that assists driving of the vehicle, in order to increase the safeness of automatic driving control in the vehicle, a device that makes a notification to the occupant prompting disengagement from automatic driving when specific conditions for performing automatic driving are not met during automatic driving of the vehicle (see, for example, JP-A No. 2014-106854, is known.
However, in the technology of JP-A No. 2009-001094 there is a concern that the occupant may confuse the stimulus for information transmissions imparted to the hands with stimulus propagated by the steering wheel from vehicle oscillations generated while travelling, and the information may be overlooked. Moreover, although a notification can be made prompting for disengagement of automatic driving in the technology of JP-A 2014-106854, this is performed during automatic driving of the vehicle, and is insufficient as a case for notifying information from the vehicle side.
As driving assistance technology improves in vehicles, it is conceivable that cases will arise in which the driving authority of the occupant will be entrusted to the vehicle side by the vehicle driving assistance. However, it is preferable for the switch of driving authority to be notified to the occupant by appropriate information in such cases. In cases in which there is insufficient information notification when the vehicle driving assistance entrusts driving authority to the vehicle side from the occupant manually driving, there is a possibility that the occupant will be made to feel apprehensive regarding, for example, inability to confirm whether automatic driving was correctly implemented in the vehicle. Moreover, in cases in which there is insufficient information notification when driving authority is returned from the vehicle side using the driving assistance to the occupant manually driving, there are concerns related to the automatic driving being disengaged by the vehicle side while the occupant remains unprepared for the return to manual driving by the occupant.